Hello !
How’s the Sunday going so far? My brain juices have been a bit slow this morning - after the longest time, I had rice for lunch and dinner last night. Don’t get me wrong - I loved it, especially since the lunch was at my mom’s - after 6 months! But I get sluggish, always have.
Nothing that a good coffee cannot solve, and I have plenty of that. Plus, once I wrap this up, need to get some activity for the day and I’ll be right as rain.
There’s some serious cake-eating I have to do later in the evening too. That’s my plan for today.
On to the 3 things for today.
a simple protocol for eating more vegetables. For someone like me who did not eat vegetables at all growing up, this worked like a charm.
on the fear of crashing/failing. I delayed starting my blog for about 5 years. I kept thinking “next week/month” and little did I realise years had flown by.
sometimes we need a jolt. On our first-ever Daily9 challenge and why we launched it during a week known for gluttony.
Before we begin, a request. I would greatly appreciate it if you can share ONE of my posts below (if you liked it) with ONE or TWO of your friends/family.
a simple protocol for eating more vegetables
I am sure you’ve heard the “here’s how you wake up early” method. Each day, you set the alarm for 5 minutes earlier than the previous day. And voila, within a month, you are waking up 2 hours earlier.
This is a silly protocol because waking up is not an isolated instance. What you did the previous day, how stressful a day you had, how much TV you watched, how much beer you drank - all of it matters. Because it is not just about snapping awake but we have to have a productive day.
But out of this idea, I developed my plate inversion protocol. I hated vegetables. I never ate them until I was 25 or thereabouts. While changing cuisines, geographical location and lifestyle helped, what worked for me was a slow-and-steady approach.
I did not change what I ate, what meal prep I did, or well, anything at all. Except for one thing. I would remove 1 spoon of grain and add 1 spoon of vegetables to my plate.
I was mindful of creating my plate approximately the same way daily, and sometimes I would spend a week at the same step i.e. ratio of veggies to non-veggies on my plate. Slowly, my plate started to change, and to re-organise itself. It took me the better part of a year but I found myself craving vegetables, ordering meals differently at restaurants and modifying my eating patterns in a sustainable fashion.
I think this is actually a lot simpler to do in traditional Indian cooking because meals are more homogeneous. There’s the grain - mostly rice or roti. And there’s the lentils, the vegetables, and the gravy around it.
Measure out what you are eating. No judgment allowed. Make sure you do this for all your servings.
Tomorrow, measure out the same stuff. Now, one spoon less of the grain and one spoon more of the veggies. Repeat slowly.
Similar to the alarm issue, this fails if you over-think it. I might have gone on a 6-hour trek today and the amount of food I want to eat will be significantly different to a day spent at my desk. But most days of the week, our patterns are about the same. Just focus on those.
failure is always an option
It took me 5 years to re-start my blog. On bad days, I would irritate myself about how I should’ve continued writing (I wrote a fairly regular blog between 2009-11). On good days, I would make copious notes and plans on what I would write about. Except I never got around to writing.
I was too worried, too scared about writing poor articles. About writing stuff people did not want to read. About people not reading my work.
Until I changed my attitude. Until I stopped caring how many people read it. Until I stopped playing the numbers game. Until I reminded myself of how most of my failures led to amazing self-growth and learning.
So, I write. For myself. And the 5 of you :)
One scene comes to mind - my first triathlon and I am on the bike and cycling up a terrible hill. It is so bad, and I am so untrained on the cycle (I have no idea what the right gear is) that I had to push it up. Once I am up, I did not zip down like most people. In fact, I was so scared of going too fast and not being able to handle it. Which is very likely true.
But at least, instead of being paralysed by fear, I chose the speed I'd ride down with and made it safely.
…..
It is totally fine to be scared. But that should not stop us. It can slow us down. And once we conquer that fear, once we learn that skill we can zip down that hill, if needed. Or not.Let's not fail by not starting. Let's not not fall by not getting on the bike.
Failure is always an option. It is never permanent.
You can read my post over here if you like. Rather, this is the link you should share with your friend.
sometimes we need a jolt
This is the story of the first-ever Daily9 challenge we ran back in January 2016.
The premise of the Daily9 is simple - do 9 things daily. By gamification, habit change, and a few fancy magic tricks, good things happen.
The interesting decision about the Daily9, once we came up with it, was when to do it. We knew that it had to be in January because that's when a lot of us find the inherent motivation to reset things. Yes, a year is a year whenever you start measuring it but the human mind prefers a clean slate, a fresh start.
But in South India (our community was based out of here primarily), how do we do this? With the harvest festival coming in as soon as we start. Would it be a good idea to utilise the food coma people feel at the end of it, and get them going?
Do we wait for the festival to be over, which meant we would start only 20 days into the year? Or do we start on January 1st, which might be way too early as people tend to be unprepared for it i.e. the motivation might be high but it requires thought and planning to clean things up.
Finding the right time was paramount. Because we knew our solution, the game we had come up with, the habit change parts, the sense of competition - all of it had promise. But when ?!?!
We have excuses for every week of the year. A long time ago, festivals were a time for celebration, for gorging on food. They truly were a special occasion. Today, we have someone's birthday every week. We can order fancy confectionaries any day.
If not the festival, it was always going to be something else.
We decided to shake people up. We decided to not let this be an easy start.
And the community responded. It had the desired effect. It changed people’s mindset about things. We realised we could say no. We realised we could eat in sensible quantities and not descend into a food coma.
We have too many excuses today. So many that we cannot differentiate between legitimate ones and stupid ones. Sometimes, you have to do incredibly hard things to learn the difference. Get out of your comfort zone.
You can read the original post here i.e. this is the one to share with your friend.
a parting thought
I leave you with a thought. Maybe it is not fitness or nutrition or health. But what are you coasting through? Where do you need a jolt? Where do you keep giving yourself an excuse?
The start of writing my blog again has led me to a few more learnings that go beyond just that. It involved me conquering my fear of crashing, and giving myself a jolt by writing daily. Where did the time come from? Well, it was always there.
As always, thank you for reading. You go and have a wonderful day.
